August 23, 2007

By chance I saw a few minutes of newsnight report yesterday.
Apparently psychologists are admitting that IQ is highly dependent on culture.

Not culture in terms of the difference between say, Japanese society and British society but more between say, peasant, hunter-gatherer, early industrial, “post” industrial societies etc.

Within the UK IQ has been advancing by about three points per decade since the 1950’s. Yet our DNA is not changing. We, as a society, are creating an environment for children which equips them to achieve better IQ scores. The suspicion is that types of intelligence which IQ test don’t measure might be falling.

I’d wish the link to the Newsnight video clip would work, but with the declining technical standards at the BBC….